Hello, comrades! My name is Sergei. I was born in the USSR in 1971. Since 1999 I have lived in the USA. Ushanka Show channel was created to share stories as well as my own memories of everyday life in the USSR. My book about arriving in America in 1995 is available on Amazon: www.amazon.com/s?k=american+diaries+1995&ref=nb_sb_noss Please contact me at sergeisputnikoff@gmail.com if you would like to purchase a signed copy of “American Diaries” You can support this project here: www.patreon.com/sputnikoff with monthly donations Support for this channel via PAYPAL: paypal.me/ushankashow Ushanka Show merchandise: teespring.com/stores/ushanka-show-shop If you are curious to try some of the Soviet-era candy and other foodstuffs, please use the link below. www.russiantable.com/imported-russian-chocolate-mishka-kosolapy__146-14.html?tracking=5a6933a9095f9 My FB: facebook.com/sergey.sputnikoff Twitter: twitter.com/ushankashow Instagram: instagram.com/ushanka_show/ Reddit: www.reddit.com/r/The_Ushanka_Show/

Sergey, I would say you missed one important topic: the waiting time for apartment could be significantly shortened if not bypassed by joining the Communist party. For instance, I had a coworker, 28 year old, living in one room in the old house, with his family of wife and two kids. His wife worked in the factory, and was accepted in the line of about 15 years. Well, she became a candidate for joining the Communist party (кандидат в члены КПСС). Very next week she was promoted to a shift manager (начальник смены), and three months later they moved into a nice three room apartment. Well, initially we ridiculed our guy for his wife's decision, but three months later we were not laughing at all. Our guy told us that was the only way to get out from old stinky one room apartment into something decent. Well, about a year later the turmoil started, his wife quit the Communist party, and one more year later the USSR collapsed. They still live in that very nice appartment.

My grandmother worked in soviet construction company and she bribed director because he had connections so my dad (her son) and my mother could cut the line and get flat. They were very lucky because it was 1989 and 'free' houses ended next year. But everyone who had flat could keep it as owner.

I grew up in Montana, 1952-1971 in a 10’ x 48’ trailer. Mom, Dad and three children. My Mom said she raised her family in a hallway. Dad said we and the bank owned that trailer. They refinanced the loan on that trailer more than once. Both parents worked. This was the rule: ‘In this family we go work on something else when we need a rest.’

"There was no free housing in the Soviet Union. What we had was heavily subsidized rent." I dunno, as an American that still sounds magical.

Sergei keeps saying "2 room apartment" and just to clarify, that's not the same as "2 bedroom apartment". In the Soviet bloc everybody used their living rooms as bedrooms at night. And to a large extent, that's still the case nowadays. So "2 room apartment" was the official name for it, it was meant for a family of 4 but there was only 1 bedroom and 1 living room in it. Just a fun fact.

in america we call soviet style housing the projects

The central boiler heat, in my experience, worked very well when it was working. The trouble was it often broke down. The other trouble was that the walls were concrete, and didn't insulate very well. So you lost heat to the out door air an very high rates. Fuel was heavily subsidized as well, so heat was still cheap. But your apartment was slow to warm up, and fast to cool down, and that made winter unpleasant. Older homes from pre-Soviet times (still rented) often had more reliable coal stoves built in. At a pinch, you could burn wood, and they never broke down. The trouble there was they often didn't have indoor plumbing, or only running water but not sewer. That meant a outhouse in the back yard, or a tin pail. Survivable, but not exactly ideal. The limits on apartment size were obviously fluid. Shortly after WWII, housing was short, multiple familes might share a couple of rooms, and communal kitchen/bathroom. But by the time my parents had me, they were able to get a two-room apartment in a small city of 200 000-300 000, with neither of them being in the military or special party organizations. Dad worked at a brick factory, and mom worked at a children's library. A Banya, is somewhere between a public bath in the ancient Roman sense, and a sauna in the Swedish sense. It was a place to get clean, but also a place to relax, possibly drink with friends, possibly part of a health regime. The other side effect of a central boiler heat system, is it also supplies your hot water for bathing and laundry. So when the boiler breaks, or the pipes leak, or whatever other breakdown troubles the system, you're left with cold water that needs to be heated on the stove in the biggest pots you can find. Fine if you're prepared, but not ideal if you're accustomed to centrally heated water, that then fails at invariably the most inconvenient moment.

I lived in Ukraine for about 21 years from 1998-2019, 20 in Kyiv and 1 year in Donetsk. Good channel. I had pieced together many different stories about Soviet times. But your channel puts it all together. Thank you.

One topic I would like to see would be trucking in the USSR and modern Russia. Short haul vs long haul trucking compared to USA. So let’s say s Soviet citizen fresh out of high school was getting a job as a carpenter, electrician or some other trade and his employer in a different city where the employee would work, had no company housing. How would worker get a place to stay until they “retire” assuming he cannot afford a “Soviet “ mortgage? Worse case let’s say, grew up in Moscow and job would be located say Leningrad or Murmansk and he had no family or friends there. Starting from scratch so to speak. Great video by the way sir!.

My wife is Cuban and the one time visiting her before we were married they had one of those hot water heaters inside of the pale and I had forgotten that they don't use ground wires there so put my finger inside of the water to see if it was hot or not. I got the worst electrical shock of my life and could feel it in my heart. My mother in law was freaking out that I would accidentally kill my self and everyone would be arrested.

I grew up in a rented house in the UK in the 60's and had to put coins in the electric meter to get electricity. A small supply of shilling coins was kept by, but sometimes we might get caught, perhaps in the middle of cooking, and as kids we would be sent with loose change to trade with a neighbor for a shilling coin for the meter. The only heat in the house was from an open coal fire in the living room. Upstairs bedrooms were never heated. Hot water would come from an electrically heated tank that was only turned on about half an hour before being needed on bath night. We did not consider ourselves poor. My father was a policeman.

Your show is great! It is very interesting to learn what it was like in the Soviet Union. 👍😊

Loved the bill analysis ! That was so interesting to find out what did people have to deal with and how much they paid.

Awesome video Sergei! Keep making videos and don't let KZfaq or the trolls stop you! I like history. That is what your channel is, just history of the late Cold War era. Nothing wrong with that!

Don't know about the USSR, but the concrete-panel apartment blocks in the former Czechoslovakia are still going strong, are easy to insulate and renovate, and the surrounding areas have plenty of green areas and nice communities. In the capitalist UK, the private companies that built the concrete-panel apartment blocks in the 1960s skimped on the steel fixings and most of them had to be pulled down after a gas explosion collapsed one in the 1980s and killed several people. Fast-forward to the UK of the late 2010s, and a private company skimped on the insulation materials on the outside of a concrete apartment block and ended up killing almost 80 people.

The Jack London story was The People of the Abyss, written in 1902.

I was born in the USSR, Leningrad in 1973. Live in the USA since 2000. Somehow my soviet life experience was much much happier than yours. I can hear the pain in your voice I didn't have. Guess every experience is unique

In western Siberia to this day, you will find housing in villages that are the same for over 100 years. I lived in this village for 5 days two years ago. Running water in the kitchen but no bathroom. Well, I was in US Army so it was no shock to me living there. The owner said he was going to upgrade the house if he married the right woman. LOL

Those thinks are not rent, they are utilities (комунальные). There was also no homeless and no unemployed because you could always live in a co-living type apartment(комуналка/общежитие) with shared kitchen, restrooms, and showers while you're waiting for your apartment. And being unemployed was illigal and you would get a job assigned to you, usually construction job like on that picture at 18:50. Engineers and managers were getting bigger and better apartments and with less wait time. Anyone could becomes an engineer by going to University which was not only free but if you get good grades you would get a sort of scholarship(стипендия) which is paid to you, not to the University. Highschool was also mandatory. I was surprised how many people did not graduate highschool in the US

I used to read gas meters in Kentucky that was a great job freedom wise. I was totally in control of my work day and once you read a route once you knew it. Rural routes were ny favorite. Some meters were in the middle of farms on transmission lines and took 15 minutes to walk to. It was awesome doing a job that most people would quit on out of laziness. Maybe I'm crazy but crawling under a barbed wire fence to get to a gas meter was fun to me.

Sir, your point about gas meter shut-off is fair. Many will have heard the term 'energy poverty', and that each winter in many countries elderly people pass away from inadequate heating. Here in the UK, my energy needs alone cost around 5% of my income, and much more still percentage-wise for those less fortunate still. Your parent's rent, energy, services, water etc etc in Kiev, you say, in a capital city, came to a total of 5% of income all-in. It is worth stressing that point here. I believe myself to be objective and empirical, not that other word you mentioned. The 'cheaper' metered services will only prevail until the private utility providers establish a proper foothold in the supply sector, then it will be played to shareholder rules. Those Antonov aircraft are awsome. Thanks for the cool though contraversial videos. Kind regards. (Edit, spelling correction).

Your story of life in the Soviet Union resonated for me, although i've never stepped foot in that country. I was raised in a small village in Victoria, in Australia, in the early 1950's, and this was my experience. * We had no gas. It just wasn't available. * We had no electricity, apart from what we generated ourselves. * We had no running water - apart from that which ran out of the fresh water tank that collected water from the roof. * We had no sewage of dirty water collection. So how did we live? Well, we had to rely on our 24 volt, petrol-driven, electricity generator, and a bank of second hand 12 volt batteries for a little electricity, basically for lighting. As a backup, we used kerosene (paraffin in some countries) lamps, once the batteries ran flat. We had a complex system of buried pipes running under the garden, designed to discharge water into the soil to grow vegetables. We had an outdoor toilet that looked a lot like the one you showed, although it had a couple of shackles on each side, so that it could be lifted by two people, and moved to a new location when the hole it was sitting over filled up too much. We had a kerosene refrigerator, to keep food fresh, a "chip heater" to heat water for bathing (a bit like this: scontent.fmel5-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.6435-9/73252564_1163701333817246_9183535996141043712_n.jpg?_nc_cat=103&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=cdbe9c&_nc_ohc=ChxOKXOdTKYAX8e9Y64&_nc_ht=scontent.fmel5-1.fna&oh=00_AfDXZGyaBh40KWQDu0Lu7i5ka9e9VmZFhbZfUU7mRwtMLw&oe=64081C66), a wood stove for some heat and for cooking, an open fireplace for heating. We had a cow, so milk and butter were available. And we had a dolly tub (like this victoriancollections.net.au/media/collectors/51183fd8023fd707bcd3eff8/items/5a25dbf321ea6717dc7e18de/item-media/5aa6615421ea6b0a8049a2cf/VictorianCollections-large.jpg ), and we had to travel over 20 miles to the nearest shop to buy essentials. I suspect mot all that different to your rural cousins, actually. Oh, and no trains, no buses, no taxis, and only one petrol pump that looked like this: nationalmotorcyclemuseum.com.au/gallery/memorabilia/images/Petrol-Pump-BD-37.jpg

Yes, I’ve always heard that in the Soviet Union you could get a free flat because that’s what Soviets told me, some told me that first they would go into a hostel or a komunalka first and the waiting depended on the local area. Thanks for sharing this and showing the breakdown coats of of a 2 bedroom flat.

currently where I live, the average living costs for a typical 700 square foot apartment (1 bed 1 bath) could be up to around 85% or more of your income based on the average pay in this area from my own experiences and based on the average income based on zip code. I got lucky and found the only cheap place with a short waiting list (which I found out why when I decided to move out) and brought that down to maybe 75% most months when I would just eat cheap noodles and cereal before and after work in addition to going to my grandparents house for a home cooked meal. This came without a washer/dryer , the dishwasher was a complete loss, the garbage disposal was also incredibly messed up, and I only had enough hot water to fill half a bath tub. So cooking was just a waste of money and I couldn't clean any of my dishes properly if I did, my baths and showers were always room temp so it didn't just suddenly start pouring cold water, and I had to waste gas money driving down to my grandparents house to use their washer/dryer for free. I'm wondering how this compares to other people's situations in other countries (I'm from the US), how much disposable income you would have and how expensive entertainment is now and back in the soviet union, and even how this compares to other parts of the country.

I can imaging that living conditions. I was born (in literally) in cottage size 4x6 m, minus large brick oven. My parents and grandmother and seven children lived in it. Sauna was in separate building. My father was miner and mine was 30 kilometrs far. That happiness lasted ten years and my parents divorced.

Yugoslav socialism superior to Soviet: 45 sq meters were one-room apartments for young couples but for 4 members fsmilies there were 55 to 65 sq meters 2 room apts

Thank you for the enlightening story about soviet housing. I was curious if you feel the housing situatiom was seemingly more austere than the west because of the mass destruction that happened to the Soviet Union during ww2 Also, in response to your demonitization post recently, , i believe that even though youtube is extremely and oppressivly left leaning by American standards America is still suffering from "russophobia" and if you dare say anything that is positive about the former Soviet Union many people feel you are fraternizing with the enemy. We were very inundated with very caustic anti Soviet propaganda during the cold war. This was in signifigant part due to the military industrial complex needing to sell weapons to the government and if our enemy (the soviet union and her people) weren't seen as so horrible then why would we need to spend so much on weapons. Also we lost about 50k soldiers during the vietnam war and many more were wounded and traumatized. The country as a whole largely blames the soviet kunion for this because they supported and supplied arms to the north Vietnamese forces. There are people here still to this day fighting the Vietnam war in their minds. So if you attempt to give a fair critique of the pros and cons of the soviet union there are many people who basicly dont hear the cons and only receive a pro soviet and pro communist message and this scares and antagonizes them. You are only recenly here Sergei,, you came after our overt austerity and often poverty was only recently glossed over. We were only recently a country without internet, without starbucks, without mega groceries full of gourmet food everywhere. We were very recently a country of relatively simple people who for the most part only consumed what they produced. So what you have seen with your own eyes doesnt represent America prior to the very late 80's and very early 90's. You see a fake plastic and fake chrome America made artificially sick, weak, and fat from runaway fiat money and the results of Nafta stealing our jobs and factories. What i mean is that there is still a very profound unworldly mentality held by many people to this day even though virtually nobody is without a super duper phone,, and most kids (teens and college kids) dont know what it is to be "lucky" to get a job. Jobs are everywhere now. Maybe you wouldnt want most of them,, however all of these undesirable entry level jobs provide spending cash and can prevent worker from being truly broke (too broke for bus fare, too broke to buy a movie ticket or a coke). America was very recently not a place with help wanted signs everywhere. Anyway,, russophobia and destructive anti soviet deferrals to the normative instead of logical and empirical consideration has been engeneered into the fabric of the American mindset for 70 uears and sadly I don't see this changing quickly. Your channel is my happy place on youtube!! Thank you for sharing your life and memories!!!! 👍👍👍👍👍👍

I'm from Kingdom Of Denmark, we lived close to west and (East GermanyDDR) i would love to see a video about East Germany, we had a german teacher in school who fled Under the berlin wall in 1987, and they moved to our country in fear of Staasi was too close to (West GermanyBRD) her story was really crazy, how her older brother who escaped in 83 digged a tunnel under the wall and how quiet they had to be because the staasi always followed them, my father served in the Danish Royal Army in the Early 80's. soldiers from Ussr and Warsaw pact was nicknamed (Røde Banditter/Red Bandits) in our army at the time, Great channel earned a sub from here Best Wishes -KingdomOfDenmark

The meters that required money. That's a European thing, not a USA thing.

Housing sizes in the US were much smaller in the past. In 1980 the median was about 1600 sq ft. This is one of the reasons for housing prices increasing faster than income. Everyone wants a bigger house which necessitates a bigger lot. That means less land which also drives up housing prices.

Where could you and how could you vacation in the USSR? Love your show, me and my son really get into them, it’s great to discuss and talk about the difference between the USA and the USSR. Thanks and keep up the amazing job.

At this time 1988 in America rent was $550 mo., and income was ~$20,000 a year. Recession was hitting at that time, basic jobs were hard to find.

Very interesting. Thank you very much!

I love these detailed looks into everyday life, thank you!

So, you got a job at the factory in town... and could wait 20 years for an apartment? Yikes. That was some workers paradise.

One thing that I found interesting, is how in the winter time people leave their windows open to get fresh air. I guess if you’re paying A flat rate it doesn’t matter.

13:17 - Nice sticker selection on that car, lol.

Spot on sir!. Todays American youth are being brainwashed with our public school systems about how good this type of government system would be ..I do like how they would take care of the vets ..Thats the only thing..I have a friend who grew up in Russia ..He came here in 1967 via Canada we are good friends and he tells me how was growing up there ..Anyway he is a smart man 70 years old Skilled trads ..GMC I worked with we both are retired..By the way we really don't own our property here in the US also ..property tax 90 % for services you don't use .. Most of it goes to corrupt school systems who are not educating anyone but paying big money to worthless administrators ...You channel is very good..

Myself as an American can never see myself owning a home. The standard of living in the USA has gone down hill. At my age my grandfather had a home a family a truck and a Mustang mach 1 in the 70s. I could never even dream of having even half of that in 2020.

Interesting about the "antenna tax" (if I can call it that), In Italy and prob Europe, people have to pay a tax just for having a TV in the house and today it is paid together with electricity, unless one declares that they don't have it...

Meanwhile in 2023 in the US rent has gotten so high that people are living crammed in like soviet apartments but paying 1/3-1/2 their income for it. and then pay for heat on top of that. 5 percent sounds pretty good. what was that about a luxury SUV?

Apartments in USA were 650 and up square footage, could be even smaller but average was probably around 8-900. House were same, you could get a very small home but I'd have to say those were probably little bigger average around 1200

So it's ironic that we're talking about the largest country in the world and still the houses that the government provided were only 86 sqft per family. Damn the Soviet government was miser.

It is free real estate!.

14:50 That's a horrible outhouse though. They can be much nicer so everything except the hole is enclosed and you're sitting on something like a bench. They're still used and if you take care of the smell with sawdust, it's not bad at all.

One thing that came to mind about the hard wired radio. Since surveillance was paramount, I wonder if it could have been used to listen to the family?

Wonder why they charged for radio and antenna separate since radio is just electricity and antenna isn't using anything.

I'm in Sarajevo, Bosnia, and we still don't have water meters in our apartments (the apartments in new buildings do have water meters, but buildings from Socialist period don't). There is one water meter for the whole building entrance. The amount of water spent is divided by the number of people registered in the flats of that particular entrance. The cost is divided per person. Now the problem is each household should register the exact number of people living there but many don't do that (for example a family of four registers 3 or sometimes even 2 persons), so basically, I, who does things properly and registers the actual amount of family members of my household (myself, wife and kids) end up paying more than I should.

The system and procedure which was explained is much the same as what was in the UK, a very large percentage of Housing in the UK was State housing

Here in Halifax, a 1000 square foot apartment goes for $1700 monthly and up. Luxury apartments can cost $5000 a month. This doesn’t include utilities.

It's hilarious that you had to pay for state propaganda radio!

We are truly blessed, I just figured it out and it costs me 1/2%, one half of one percent my income to live alone in a two bedroom (old, 1972) ranch style house ,four rooms and a bath, on the very edge of a large American city. And we have politicians who want to live the soviet dream here.

l'm on a Ushanka Show video binge again.

Designing apartment buildings jobs seems the most useless job considering all apartment buildings had like 3 different designs lol

Bernie Sanders seems to like you I see him a lot in your adds.

Here in Indonesia, thes types of housing are called "Rumah Susun Sederhana Sewa" or "Rusunawa" for short. The term literally translates to "Simple Rented Flats" built by the Ministry of Public Works and Communal Housing. Most of the older ones were built in a Khrushchyovka-style, while newer ones were built in a Brezhnevka-style for those in the city centre,and Khrushchyova-style in the outskirts.

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

6:20 The Electricity suppliers might not have had the correct figures showing on the meter in the order that you would expect to see them. For example, if you thought the number on the far left was the largest column of numbers, you might alter this in order to try to pay less for electric. In reality, you might have just altered the singles digit that normally shows at the opposite end here, and the largest digit has remained unaltered.

What do you think of the “Nuclear Family” model in America during the 50’s?

Love this channel. I've always been interested in Soviet society. It's funny how you comment how Soviet housing was mostly small apartments with one or two rooms. Go to NYC or LA or any large city in the US you get that same size apartment, but at a hyper inflated price.

This is exactly the kind of content I wanted this recommendation algorithm got me

That is really Shocking, 5 people share a 2 roomed apartment.. Where do they sleep all in one bedroom.?? Children adults in same bedroom..? We grew up as a family of six, 3 sisters and brother in 4 bedroom house, with large kitchen living and dining room.

Intersting topics from a British perspective as for social housing we still can exchange properties much like the way you described but with out the under the table deals, and for the gas meter that shuts off the first one had the word shilling on it meaning it was a British meter that was coin operated.

21 Rubles/month, and people made 400 Rubles/month. That isn't bad. For me, my rent in a one bedroom apartment in Los Angeles city is about $2850/month, and this isn't including utilities. Utilities cost $125 per month. The average wage in the USA is about $2500/month. My wage is about $5500/month before taxes. I am spending $2975/month for rent and utilities a month. That eats up 54.1% of my wage per month. In the USSR, people spent 5.25% to 7% of their income per month that is a lot less than what the average American pays for rent or their mortgage per month.

It seems to be so incredibly hard to understand for some people that if there are 10 million people and 9 million apartments, the supply is going to be rationed. Somehow, through some means, access will be limited. It can be through price, wait lists, Party seniority, contacts, fame, professional status, or so on, but somehow not everyone will get one. That's a mathematical impossibility.

With a newborn only days old my friend in Romania was in his apartment and it was 20ﾟ inside. Is -6 Celsius.

My mother in law didn't manage to get apartment via work. She and father in law delayed getting my wife baptised as they thought that might be a black mark on their file. Even after this she continued to wait and contained to pay subscription to union (профсоюз) to be allowed to be on waiting list. Then in 1989/90 she decided to cancel the subscription and give up place in queue (maybe after receiving bad advice from rival in the queue?). Then Soviet Union collapsed. Grand mother in law still had her apartment she got via work in the Red October Chocolate Factory. Friends in a "science town" not far from Moscow managed to get 3 room apartment. The dad worked for fire brigade (МЧС), mum worked in nursery. His work accelerated the application plus having two daughters met the quota for larger apartment. Some people, out of luck more than anything, after collapse of USSR acquired ownership of magnificent properties. Sometimes even on the main street in central Moscow, Tverskaya for example. In practice to have interest in such a property before collapse you would need to be an important person.

Very informative video. Thank you, Sergei! The USSR seems like it was an interesting place. Some good, some bad for sure, but interesting overall.

pay radio is like pay tv cable or satellite tv

In the UK right now the UK Government is stopping new house building, causing devastating shortages and price hikes

Sergei, my father has been to Soviet Union in the 1980s early. Well he was happy with the rents. Right now in my city you have to pay around 40%-80% salary on rents, gas, electricity and shortage of 10Million homes in the country. So, for situation like ours I think it is a pretty good package for a common person who doesn't even have a house or apartment to begin.

because the Soviet Union never once had a GDP larger than the United States, it was an inappropriate comparison because the Soviet GDP per capita was only 1/2 us gdp per capita. also the Soviet Union of European countries is fairer when competing with other European countries. Ireland has a smaller population density than the United States but because of your opinion it is also small, the size of the house is also smaller than the United States. Even Canadians own homes 20% smaller than the United States but the GDP per capita is 30% smaller too. So comparing the houses of the rich to the houses of the poor is really not good

Thank you for taking us back to the CCCP

So wonderful to hear these stories now from the other side of the iron curtain .

Believe me, living accommodations for even middle class families in India was better than the Soviet Union. We had our own homes with electricity, running water, indoor bathrooms and all

Just a clarification, in capitalist countries you dont OWN your apartment either usually. The landlord or the complex owns it. You rent it. If you move you dont sell your apartment or make money. You gotta go through the same ordeal of getting out of your lease and finding a new apartment to rent.

It is more than 100% of income here for a cheap as possible substandard unit for some full time workers who have to double up. Many dont have any private property but not because it is illegal. The economy "has never been stronger" or so the man says. I look back with fond memories of the days when rent was only 33%.

Been watching your channel lately.. and can relate so much to everything.. since I was born in Cuba.. and we had the same..

“ When something is ‘free’, *you are the product* !” When someone else is paying you have no choice. There is a spectrum of consensual individual choice vs. compulsory government mandate. The latter lacks any freedom.

The USSR just didn't have enough housing to go around. Otherwise the system was good. Here in the US we have like 9 times more empty houses than homeless people, so we could make it work better.

Thanks again love em all!

Great insight to what life is really like back then, it seems so alien to how we live. I’m in my mid 50’s now and retired from the US Army and I noticed the average rent prices have skyrocketed since I was young, kids today don’t have the same low prices as I did in 1984. Back then my rent for a nice two bedroom apartment for $125 and another $65 for phone and utilities and my income at a full time job at near minimum wage was $470 a month. So looking at rent by a percentage of my income it was around 43% but today that’s way above 60% which leaves them with nearly no income to use on other things or for savings. This is why we see a lot of young people sharing a house/apartment with friends or renting out bedrooms to lower the cost per person.

sergei's stories always make me glad i grew up in the usa. i'm always amazed that people can watch these videos and still praise communism in the comments.

Very interesting , for a Canadian, its so different .I do enjoy your channel.

They were never free.... fully paid in one way or other

I love that radio! It looks like something Fred Flintstone would have.

Ever expanding diversity, the curse of urban and now suburban housing in Ameriki. Americans teleported from the 80s would not believe the current state of things and would likely take the system down. GenX and Boomers have had their minds shaped by intense social engineering over the decades. The younger gens never knew better and dependably follow the dictates of the unnamed overlords. Things were not ideal by any stretch, but the current western situation is much worse.

A cautionary tales that nothing free is really free.

Man, it sounds like this system (along with maybe bigger apartments) could have used something like the internet. I mean, a lot of these are challenges but think of how much easier it would be in your example of trading a house between Leningrad and Sevastopol if there was an equivalent of Craigslist. Or, hell, you could eliminate the long wait times at the bank with online banking, or even just online billing for rents. I mean here in Canada it seems the reality of the Soviet Union is always more complicated than either conservatives and socialists make it out to be. Here in Canada most people I know are paying half their income or more toward rent in the cities, and the cities themselves are very car-centric. I can't say I'd want to live in a 400 sqft apartment, even if it was 10% of my wage, but if more of my community was within walking distance and with more communal spaces, incentivizing me to spend as little time in my apartment as possible, that sounds a least like a nice solution. Thank-you for the video.

I understand it was quite different in Moscow and St Petersburg in the 1950s. Stalin had underway a massive public housing program with small appts for families and rooms for individuals. Shared kitchens & mess halls each building and toilet & shower facilities on each floor. A little more proletarian, suited for industrial armies.

I grew up differently than I live now. We weren’t poor but we weren’t rich either. We didn’t waste much. We had a 40 gallon water heater so when we ran out, we had to wait a little while for the water to heat up. I live in a 3000 square foot house now. We have a tankless water heater do we never run out. We average over 400 gallons of water a day. We’re helping consume water to make room for the rising oceans. (It’s a joke) I guess we have always had it too easy in the US.

When my dad was young he lived in a mining town in England in the early 60s and the miners got a house and the family over the road from him husband/dad was killed in the mine and the same day they turned up at the house and threw the family on the streets. That's the great life we were having in the west back in the day.

The new gas and electric meters in England will automatically shut you off and accept credit cards right on the machine. They are starting to import something similar here in the states.

This is absolutely fascinating I had no idea what it was like to live in the ussr until now

Прекрасно! Great insights and content! You have new subscriber.

normally based on apartments it's called waiting till the lease is up and then you can move on that month when the lease is up or and you can break the lease which is whatever the month's rent is remaining. for houses well you need 20 percent down and then closing costs.

"Free" stuff from a government is nearly always worth every penny.

That hot water heating appliance in the bucket sure looks safe! /s

These sorts of details prompt my imagination. I was once able to write and sell a story written from what I learned reading about espionage. The further victory was it was their only fiction cover story.